Category Archives: Sales Matters

Posts in this category relate to activities and operations intended to increase demand for what an organization offers its customers.

Get Aligned, Get Clear, Sales Matters

What Would Peter Drucker Think of Your ICP?

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TL;DR

  • Investors’ first question is always your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). If you can’t answer crisply, nothing else matters.

  • Most teams treat ICP as one question, but it’s really three:

WHAT do you provide?

WHO must have it now?

WHY do they choose you over alternatives?

  • Mis-alignment on any leg stalls growth—marketing targets the wrong buyers, product builds the wrong features, sales can’t close.

  • Drucker’s biographer calls IntelliVen’s WHAT–WHO–WHY framework “an innovation that changes the value of leadership.” It’s exactly the clarity Drucker preached.

  • Why teams still struggle: cognitive overload, functional bias (product vs. sales vs. vision), and thinking ICP is “one-and-done.”

  • IntelliVen’s MtL System + AI-powered IVOA Sandbox crowdsources input, exposes misalignment, and guides teams to a shared ICP they revisit continuously.

  • Results when everyone shares the same ICP: faster sales ramps, sharper product decisions, lower CAC, higher LTV—one enterprise software firm grew from start-up to a valuation of $2+ B.

  • Takeaway: Treat your ICP as a living strategic asset. Use WHAT–WHO–WHY to align your team, revisit it often, and growth will follow.

The Hidden Failure Pattern

Pursue any professional financing or acquisition, and you’ll face the same first question: “Who’s your ideal customer?” It sounds like a simple question deserving a simple answer. But it’s not.

Most funding requests and transactions stall right here. Without a crisp answer, investors and buyers move on. What’s more troubling is that even after securing funding or sale, ICP clarity remains the make-or-break factor for sustained success. CB Insights, for example, found that more than a third of all startup failures stem from unclear market fit: companies that never nailed their Ideal Customer Profile.

It turns out that even seasoned executives struggle with the ICP challenge. As a result, they’re inefficiently burning resources in predictable ways:

  • Selling to customers who will never buy.
  • Wasting time closing sales with customers who will not reach target Lifetime Value.
  • Building features for people who don’t need them.
  • Crafting messages that resonate with no one in particular because they’re trying not to exclude anyone rather than focusing on the ideal.

The right solution for the wrong customer fails. The wrong solution for the right customer fails. While these may seem like execution problems, they are really clarity and alignment problems.

Most people think that a query to describe their ICP is one question requiring one answer, whereas it is really three interconnected questions at once:

  • WHAT do you deliver?
  • WHO needs it most?
  • WHY do they choose you?

Like a three-legged stool, if answers to any of the three is out of sync with one or both of the others, the cornerstone of the business caves-in. Marketing targets the wrong prospects. Sales struggles to close strategic deals in preference for deals of no strategic value (i.e., they are a waste of time!). Product builds features nobody wants. Teams pull in different directions, and so on.

What Would Drucker Say?

Peter Drucker, the father of management science, famously said, “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” But what would the father of modern management think of our approach to tackling today’s ICP challenge?

We didn’t have to guess. Dr. Elizabeth Haas Edersheim (Drucker’s personally chosen biographer, former McKinsey senior partner, and MIT Sloan Ph.D.) joined our recent workshop. When asked what Drucker would think of our WHAT-WHO-WHY framework, her response was immediate:

“Peter defined innovation not as having a new idea, but by how much it changes the value delivered to customers. Your WHAT-WHO-WHY approach does exactly that—it fundamentally enhances the value leaders deliver. Drucker would have loved this because it clarifies purpose, aligns teams, and dramatically amplifies their collective impact.”

She continued:

“Drucker was deeply human-centric. Your method of bringing everyone to shared understanding of WHAT, WHO, and WHY doesn’t just clarify strategy—it unlocks human energy inside organizations. People can finally work with real purpose and clarity.”

Why Smart Teams Still Struggle

If the framework is straightforward, why do even experienced leaders find ICP clarity elusive? Three reasons:

Cognitive overload. Holding three interconnected dimensions in mind at once is mental work. Teams unconscious simplify, losing crucial nuance.

Functional bias. People gravitate toward their expertise. Product leaders obsess over WHAT. Sales focuses on WHO. Visionaries champion WHY. Without deliberate integration, teams optimize their piece while missing the whole.

Static thinking. Most treat ICP as a one-time exercise. But your ideal customer evolves as you do. The best-performing organizations revisit and refine their WHAT-WHO-WHY with regularity: embedding the framework into leadership rhythms, strategy sessions, and go-to-market planning.

Case Example

Here’s what happens when teams get the framework right. A consulting firm was stuck at $9M revenue, walking away from acquisition offers because they couldn’t get to their $12M target. Their WHAT-WHO-WHY was “we do stuff for money.”

After defining their true WHAT-WHO-WHY (visually stimulating strategy facilitation for U.S. Federal Government leaders who want to make a difference, accomplish missions, and get promoted), everything changed.

Four years later, they sold for $30M+.

But that’s just the beginning. Another company started using WHAT-WHO-WHY clarity at $15M revenue. They kept refining the framework through five private equity hold cycles. Today? North of $2 billion valuation.

The pattern isn’t luck. It’s what happens when organizations use clarity as a strategic asset, not a checkbox.

Whether you’re leading a startup seeking Series A, a nonprofit pursuing major donors, a church building community engagement, or a Fortune 500 division defending market share, the challenge remains the same. Every organization at every stage needs to answer the same three questions with precision. The framework works across all business models, capital structures, and geographies because the fundamental human need for clarity and alignment is universal.

Beyond the Foundation

Here’s what most people miss: WHAT-WHO-WHY clarity is powerful, but the framework is just the first element of what high-performing teams need.

Think of it as Truth #2 in our Manage to Lead system. It’s preceded by understanding your current context and followed by five more integrated truths about how teams actually execute and scale. Each builds on the others. Skip one, and even the best strategy stumbles.

The companies that outperform don’t just get their ICP right. They master the full sequence: how to assess where they stand, align everyone around the right priorities, plan change that works, execute without losing momentum, and remove the barriers that stop most teams from reaching their potential.

The Real Test

Your WHAT-WHO-WHY isn’t just a statement. The framework is a decision-making filter. When the framework is right, tough choices become obvious. Resource allocation gets clearer. Teams move faster because they’re no longer debating fundamentals.

When teams at inflection points (scaling, pivoting, fundraising, integrating new leadership) start with WHAT-WHO-WHY clarity, they compress months of alignment work into weeks. Not because the framework is magic, but because it surfaces and resolves the disconnects that otherwise create expensive detours.

Your Next Move

If you’re leading through change, start with the foundation. Download our WHAT-WHO-WHY template, or request access to the IntelliVen Sandbox where your team can work through this together—with AI-powered feedback that accelerates the iteration process.

But remember: the framework is just the beginning. The teams that win understand that clarity is built, not discovered. And building clarity requires more than one framework. Building clarity requires a system.

Get Clear. Align. Grow.

Ready to see what aligned clarity can unlock for your team?
• Explore the full Manage-to-Lead System at IntelliVen.com
• Request a 10-day IVOA Sandbox trial—just contact us and we’ll set you up
• Watch the 40-minute workshop Dr. Edersheim attended and hear her remarks firsthand

About the Author

Peter DiGiammarino has helped hundreds of leadership teams architect breakthrough performance across private, public, VC-backed, and PE-owned companies. His Manage to Lead system distills decades of operating experience into seven enduring truths and 60+ practical tools that guide teams through critical inflection points.

Focus, Sales Matters

Don’t go to the conference stupid!

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While it’s possible that a qualified sales prospect might be seated next to you at a conference session or visit your booth, relying solely on chance encounters isn’t a smart strategy. The odds are just too slim to make random interactions a primary reason for attending.

The true value of attending an industry conference multiplies when it’s approached as a well-planned, strategic platform. A team committed to making the most of the experience can leverage the event before, during, and after to maximize its impact.

To maximize the opportunity, proactively engage with targeted executives ahead of the event. Every interaction is a chance to establish a meaningful connection around a shared interest—the conference itself. Use these moments to gather insights, influence thinking, and further cultivate interest in your organization’s offerings.

Along these lines:

    • Identify Targeted Prospects: Before the conference, research who will attend from your targeted prospects and arrange one-on-one meetings. Review advance materials to see who will speak, chair, host, or plan the event. Ask the organizers for a list of registered attendees from both this and last year’s conferences. Reach out to the individuals who are of interest to you and schedule a meeting—whether it’s for coffee, a drink, dinner, or a social function. Don’t wait until the conference begins; schedules for high-demand attendees will fill up fast.
    • Engage Executives from Targeted Organizations: Identify executives from companies that would benefit from attending the conference and personally invite them. Offer to assist with their travel arrangements, share a cab, or even sit together on the plane or train. After the event, follow up to discuss key takeaways and insights.
    • Host a Reception: Plan a reception to feature new offerings, insights, or thought leadership. Invite both current clients and prospective clients to enjoy the content as well as cocktails or hors d’oeuvres. It’s a great way to deepen relationships and engage with potential clients in a more relaxed environment.
    • Use Interactive Databases: Many conferences have online platforms that function like social networks, allowing you to filter attendees by criteria such as industry, geography, or role. Use these tools to identify potential connections and reach out through direct mail or messaging.
    • Foster Online Engagement: Encourage your team and contacts to participate in an online conversation before, during, and after the event. Follow the event’s official hashtag and key accounts. Share insights, quotes from sessions, and feedback throughout the conference. This online activity can help build a broader connection and keep the conversation going long after the event ends.

In addition to generating qualified sales leads, a conference provides a valuable opportunity to:

    • Position Your Team as Industry Leaders: Develop and showcase individual team members by having them emcee the conference, host a session, give a presentation, moderate or sit on a panel, deliver a keynote address, or sign and distribute original publications. These roles help establish your team as thought leaders in the industry.
    • Assess Competitors and Industry Trends: Use the event to observe other industry players and how they position themselves in the market. This insight will help you understand your competitive landscape and identify opportunities to differentiate your organization.
    • Enhance Your Company’s Reputation: Ensure your organization is recognized as an influential industry player by prospects, clients, competitors, partners, and suppliers. Active participation at conferences builds your brand’s authority and credibility.
    • Identify Potential Talent: Conferences are also great venues to spot strong candidates for recruitment. Keep an eye out for top industry talent and consider how they might fit into key roles within your team.

Finally, use the conference as an opportunity to develop, test, refine, and implement a screening script for those who visit your booth or attend sessions and social functions. It’s inefficient to engage deeply with everyone you encounter, as only a small percentage will be qualified prospects worth pursuing further.

Instead, shift the odds in your favor by quickly identifying and screening out individuals who aren’t a good fit. Then, use the time you would have spent with them to focus on identifying key prospects. Once you’ve pinpointed those individuals, find ways to be where they will be and make yourself known to them.

Get Aligned, Get Clear, Grow, Sales Matters

Understanding Two Perspectives: Differentiating the MtL WHY and Sinek’s Why

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In business and leadership, understanding your “Why” is pivotal for success and meaningful connections. This newsletter compares two distinct perspectives—the MtL WHY and Simon Sinek’s Why—that drive your organization’s purpose and strategy.

The MtL WHY: Understanding Your Customer

The Manage to Lead (MtL) WHY is based on the principles outlined in the book Manage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World, by Peter DiGiammarino. The MtL WHY explains why your business exists in the eyes of your customers and focuses on understanding their motivations to choose to purchase or fund what your organization provides.

Key Characteristics:

  • External Focus: Centers on your customers’ beliefs and needs.
  • Purpose: Foundation for defining your organization’s Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
  • Application: Helps craft Unique Value Propositions (UVP) and tailored messages that connect and engage. Guides marketing, lead generation, sales, and account development efforts.

Why the MtL WHY Matters

The MtL WHY helps leaders create compelling value propositions, develop messages that resonate, and build strong customer relationships by aligning offerings with customer motivations.

Sinek’s Why: Understanding Your Team

Sinek’s Why delves into the core beliefs and values that drive your organization and its people. It focuses on understanding the internal motivations and deeper purpose beyond just making profits.

Key Characteristics:

  • Internal Focus: Centers on your organization’s core beliefs.
  • Purpose: Explains why your business exists in the eyes of its members.
  • Application: Guides leadership decisions, shapes company culture, and inspires stakeholders.

Why Sinek’s Why Matters

Sinek’s Why helps build a purpose-driven culture, attract like-minded employees, and inspire loyal customers who resonate with your organization’s beliefs.

Differences Between the MtL WHY and Sinek’s Why

  • MtL WHY: Explains the need fulfilled for prospects who become customers and why they stay—why the business exists in the eyes of its customers. 
  • Sinek’s Why: Explains what drives people to join and remain with the organization—why the business exists in the eyes of its members.

Align Purpose and Motivation for Synergy

Aligning internal motivations with external customer needs creates a holistic strategy that is meaningful and, often, unbeatable. Those who master both stand out because they understand why they matter—to themselves and to their customers.

About IntelliVen

At IntelliVen, founded by Peter DiGiammarino, we specialize in helping leaders and organizations clarify their purpose, align their strategies, and achieve their fullest potential. Through our eponymous Manage to Lead (MtL) Cohort Course, leaders and teams learn to get clear, align, and grow. Whether you’re seeking to understand your customers better or to reignite your organization’s passion, we’re here to guide you on your journey.

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Get Clear, Manage to Lead, Sales Matters

Elevate Your Skills: Don’t Just Build—Create a Legacy

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The most successful professionals don’t just list skills when pitching a prospect—they frame their expertise as a solution to an urgent business problem. Whether you’re laying bricks or building castles, the labor may be the same, but the way you present it changes everything. By shifting from listing tasks you will perform to solutions you will deliver, you communicate the value you bring as a strategic partner.

Imagine walking into a prospect’s office and, instead of describing what you know how to do, you present a fully formed solution to a pressing issue. When you highlight the problems you solve and the measurable outcomes achieved, you differentiate yourself as one who puts the vision into their mind, inspiring them with a clear path forward, and then gets paid a premium to bring that vision to life. Rather than deploying skills at labor rates, you’re instantiating a vision and charging full price for delivering strategic, transformative results.

Shift Focus From Tasks to Outcomes

To elevate the perception of your value, shift the focus from tasks you perform to outcomes you deliver. Here’s how:

  • Study past projects to zero in on the business goals you helped achieve.
  • Describe your skills in terms of the problems they solve.

For example, if your offering is to help people in different departments of a client organization to work together  to prepare to perform at a high level in an emergency:

  • Move beyond “meeting facilitation” by offering instead Cross-Functional Emergency Training and emphasize its role in improving interdepartmental coordination during crises.
  • Rather than “data integration,” present it as a Crisis Management Solution that uses existing technology to enable real-time decisions in high-stakes situations—at no additional cost.

By adjusting your message this way, you’re no longer just laying bricks—you’re building castles that address critical business needs.

Build Your Toolkit: Case Studies and Competency Frameworks

Once you’ve demonstrated how your expertise solves real-world problems, package it to make your value tangible and repeatable:

  • Document insights from past projects to build a knowledge base of best practices for future engagements.
  • Create frameworks that map your skills directly to specific business challenges.
  • Develop and share case studies that clearly outline the challenge, your approach, and the impact achieved.

These artifacts enable you to communicate your capabilities in a way that resonates with clients and prospects, clearly showing the value you bring.

Steps to a Sale

When communicating with prospects, focus on how your solution will transform their operations or market position. Here’s how to effectively structure your message:

  • Articulate the key challenge your solution addresses and why this issue is difficult to solve.
  • Explain what top performers in the industry do to overcome the challenges, and emphasize that your approach encapsulates these best practices—and that you’ve done it before, ideally with customers the prospect admires.
  • Reinforce your expertise with success metrics, client testimonials, and case studies, to suggest that no one can deliver the solution as quickly, efficiently, or with as little risk as you can.

At this point, your prospect has three options:

  1. Ignore your advice.
  2. Attempt to implement your suggestions on their own.
  3. Proceed with outside help. (i.e., and since you brought the solution, have a proven track record, and have established yourself as the expert, why would they go elsewhere?)

Turn Your Business into One That Can Scale

Moving from tasks to solutions makes your sales process both more efficient and more successful. Perhaps even more importantly, this shift enables you to build a business that inspires clients with the vision of a castle and then delivers on that vision. By adopting a repeatable approach, you make it easier to sell, easier to deliver what you sell, and easier to develop and deploy resources for both sales and delivery. You’re architecting a business that will stand the test of time, growing in both scale and value, with each new engagement amplifying its impact.

See Also

Communities, Product Development, Sales Matters

Scaling User Engagement: Implementing Community Strategy for Business Growth and Loyalty

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Once there are more users of your company’s product than you can keep in touch with individually on a regular basis, it is likely time to implement a community engagement strategy.

The primary objective of a community strategy is to engage a high-priority subset of users in a forum that enables them to connect with each other and your team to benefit themselves and your company. Turning a segment of users into a community is particularly important when you care about their loyalty, and when you want to increase the number of such users.

Before creating a user community, determine who will play the following two key roles:

  • Community Manager: The person responsible for developing, driving, communicating, evaluating, and reporting on the plan of actions applied to an assigned community. This person should be able to develop relationships with active community members, understand their pain-points and successes, and do what it takes to enable their community to be successful, such as advocating that internal team members prioritize new product features needed by the community and creating educational materials for community members to use the product most effectively.
  • Communities Director: The person responsible for a portfolio of communities and community managers. Provides feedback and guidance to, and develops, community managers to reach their potential to perform and grow. This person should be a strategic thinker and an inspiring leader who understands community dynamics and company business needs. They should work with the community managers to set goals, monitor performance against goals, evaluate performance, and advocate for support by others at the company to increase the odds of achieving  community goals.

Then, together with organization leadership, those in these roles should identify the following:

  • Goal: Identify the market segment to engage as a community. and select a combination of User and Company values  from the Mutual Value Framework above to address.
  • Strategy: Select the platform on which to engage with users (e.g. Facebook, Discord, email, etc) and your approach (e.g. provide educational materials, enable peer to peer learning opportunities, seek product feedback, etc) to optimize value for users and your company in the community.
  • Plan: A set of actions with assigned resources to accomplish a specific set of results in a timeframe to execute the strategy.

Follow these six steps of an agile process to develop a high-functioning user community:

  1. Identify: Define a group of current users of the company’s product that are similar in one or more meaningful ways (e.g. language spoken, location, culture, skills, applications, industry, etc.) in a market segment critical to the business  (i.e. the market is highly profitable with high growth potential).
  2. Recruit: Reach out to users in the target segment with an invitation to join the user community through your chosen communication channel(s).
  3. Engage: Execute the plan of actions intended to create affinity and belonging (e.g. exclusive events, forums for discussion, beta testing opportunities, educational programs) and that drive the chosen value for both the company and community members. Engagement models will differ based on goals and community size. It may be best to engage a small number of users in a deep way and a larger number of users in scaled forums.
  4. Measure: Calculate the value created for both the community members and the company (e.g., increased sales due to community-driven product improvements, higher retention rates, higher engagement, etc.) and drive a plan of action to achieve targeted results in a time frame.
  5. Review: Iteratively review progress toward goals. Consider what was supposed to be done, what was done, what happened, what was learned, and what will be done next to achieve targeted results. Share successes, lessons learned, plans, and concerns with the community and internally.
  6. Iterate: Review community goals and identification criteria for community member participants and iterate on your company’s community strategy. Restart at either step 1 (if your target segment has changed) or 3 to achieve updated goals.

Illustrative Example

A Global Content Crowdsourcing Platform 

Background

The company had thousands of contributions from users on its site. Communities of users were naturally developing, since people with expertise on a given topic area were likely to share their content with others in the same topic area.

What was happening amounted to organic marketing which was of great value to the company because when additional people in that topic area wanted to contribute relevant content, they were more likely to turn to the company they already knew for their needs.

The company could have let communities continue to evolve organically, but thought that good things would happen even better and faster with a thoughtful investment in community development.

Goal: Expedite amount of content contributed in top priority vertical market segments.

Strategy: Deliver mutual value to top priority verticals through highly targeted community engagement including scaled data and conversations with top priority contributors in priority segments.

Plan: Proactively stimulate growth and engagement in targeted industry vertical market segments by taking actions such as the following:

  • Identify five high-value user segments  defined by industry.
  • Assign a community manager to each of the topic areas.
  • Charter community managers to evangelize the company to those in their segment and to set goals for recruiting both a small number of high volume contributors that they personally cultivate as well as large numbers of smaller contributors through relevant scaled channels such as publications, conferences, influencers, marketing campaigns, etc.

Result

  • Value to Users: The vertical community managers developed and disseminated tailored educational material and customer support in the verticals. They facilitated peer-to-peer relationships and learning in their verticals. They worked 1:1 with top priority contributors to ensure the company met their needs.
  • Value to Company: Retained  top priority contributors, informed product development in top priority segments and influencer-led growth through industry word-of-mouth. Ultimately, the company became a household name in the targeted verticals.

Review

Top priority NPS and penetration improved in top three targeted market segments. The two other segments struggled to grow and engage despite community engagement.

Iterate

Top priority markets were redefined, decreasing focus on the two under-performing segments and increasing investment on the top three segments, resulting in their improved NPS and significantly increasing engagement and growth rate.

Contact us to explore how community development can generate mutual value for you and your users!

About the Author

Breanna DiGiammarino Breanna DiGiammarino has 15+ years  experience working with communities at Meta, Indiegogo and the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. She uses the process described in her post to evolve product offerings. Reach her on LinkedIn to keep the communities conversation going!

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